Faith Presbyterian Church

1946 was a year of intense public fervor and activism in City of Oakland and in cities across the country. The world's most violent and bloody war had come to a close the year before and the conversion to a peacetime economy forecast a bright future of growth, prosperity and security. But three groups who had gained greatly by the war --- the business, labor and the African American community pulled the city of Oakland in different directions. The economic bounty of the war had empowered the city's business leaders to pursue plans for aggressive economic growth in the city. The strong labor unions in Oakland also gained strength as a result of the war they were poised to raise local wages and to unionize new workers in all job categories. The African Amerian population, by now triple in the size from the start of the war, was organized and determined to gain greater economic and political power to end Jim Crow employment and housing practices in Oakland and the East Bay. In 1946 the trade union staged a citywide general strike to maintain their power to control local wages and working conditions. In 1945 the business community joined together to develop the Metropolitan Oakland Area program (MOAP), an aggressive regional economic plan that would result in a dynamic metropolis with prosperity and opportunity for everyone. It was into that volatile environment that Rev. John Dillingham, a national student Secretary of the Young Men's Christian Association was called by the Presbyterian Church to build a religious community-service program for all the diverse people who had flocked to West Oakland. As if in preparation for his West coast days Dillingham's YMCA secretaryship had taken him to International conference in Finland nad Denmark where he had met and lived with people from all parts of the world. Dillingham, an African American, not only built the many-pronged community-centered project but he also founded Faith Presbyterian Church in Oakland in 1946 with the support from progressive whites at Oakland, First Presbyterian and others throughout the Presbytery of San Francisco. Faith Presbyterian Church was the first African-American congregation established on the West Coast.